Browsing: Misconceptions

A Brief History On May 13, 1958, George de Mestral, a Swiss engineer trademarked Velcro, and the company called Velcro is based in the United Kingdom. Did you think Velcro was American invented and made? Many products or inventions that “seem” as is they should be American are not necessarily so. Here is a list of 10 such items. Digging Deeper 10. Baseball and Football, circa 1344, 1400. Baseball is really a variant of Cricket, and forms of it have been played since 14th Century France. Football is a form of Rugby, which started around the beginning of the 15th…

A Brief History On May 9, 1926, Richard E. Byrd claimed to have made a flight over the North Pole, making him (the navigator) and his pilot the first men to have achieved that distinction. Doubters surfaced soon afterwards, and the 1996 release of Byrd’s diary clearly showed how he had falsified data to claim he had made the trip when in reality he had turned back without achieving his goal. People lie. Not all the time, but often enough and about big enough subjects that we have compiled a list of 10 big whoppers for you. Digging Deeper 10.…

A Brief History On May 1, 2011, President Barack Obama announced that US Navy SEAL’s had raided the lair of Osama bin Laden, master terrorist, and killed him, finally achieving some justice for the victims of the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center.  The Bush administration had failed to find bin Laden despite tough talk and grandiose threats, yet former vice president Dick Cheney among others has opined that President Obama is soft on terrorism.  Here is a list of ridiculous statements about Barack Obama that are either untrue or in terribly poor taste. 10. Obama’s mother’s…

A Brief History On April 21, 1934, one of the most famous photographs in history was alleged to have been taken by a London gynecologist!  To some, this photograph showed an image of the infamous Loch Ness Monster, the existence of which has yet to be definitively proven despite many scientific efforts to do so.  Before modern science, people came up with the best explanations that they could for just about everything.  It seems people are never content to say, “I don’t know!”  This list will avoid controversial religious topics except for the really old and out of date ones!…

A Brief History On April 20, 1862, French scientists Louis Pasteur and Claude Bernard proved that Aristotle was wrong! Digging Deeper The state of science thousands of years ago was somewhat more primitive than today. Ancient people did not have microscopes, X-rays, CT Scans, gas chromatography, chemical tests, electron microscopes, centrifuges, and had not even developed the so called scientific method to test theories. People believed the Brandt Goose came from barnacles by that name, and a common belief was that maggots came from dead flesh.  They did not understand microbes, DNA, or the Atomic Theory. Aristotle, the tutor of…